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The best ways to build your personal brand this year

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Don’t underestimate the actions that define your career growth. Here are three industry practitioners sharing their reputation recipes.

What’s common to J.K Rowling, Lee Hsien Loong, Tony Fernandes? Apart from a shining list of achievements, each one of them have built their personal brand quite meticulously. The first thing that comes to your mind when I mention each one is probably the result of a carefully undertaken career path, reinforced by a series of consistent actions and statements, both spoken and written.

And why not? Many of us managing recruitment assess the complete brand that a potential employee represents, both online and offline, and the same rules apply to our individual growth paths.

We reached out to industry practitioners across a spectrum of functions – an entrepreneur, a HR and L&D practitioner, and a business development specialist – to find out their recipes for managing reputation.

1. Care about something? Take a stand

Phillip Raskin has spent more than 20 years in communications, most recently as learning and development director for Golin in Asia. Previously based in Singapore, he has now moved to Korea, where he is working on his “How to Lose” series of books.

“These cover mistakes from the industry with not just a view toward learning lessons from our missteps, but also toward embracing our own vulnerability and humanity in the process,” he explains.

For him, the resolution for 2017 – both personally and for his professional brand – is to take a stronger, more public stand on the issues and topics he truly cares about.

“For work, that means more focus on the human side of what we do: how we interact, how we work with clients and teams as people, and how we look at and learn from ourselves,” he says. “In short, I’ll be more real, and more vocal.”

2. Got an expertise? Share it forward

Prashant Jain (PJ) is an American citizen residing in Singapore, with a global background as an entrepreneur. He has over 25 years of experience in business, technology and education management, and is passionate about traditional training crossing the digital divide by acquiring digital facilitation skills.

The key to his personal brand lies in enabling learning of the community you thrive in. “It begins by sharing our expertise and talent with the community through facilitating, coaching, mentoring or even teaching. True personal branding is then achieved when the people we impact are enabled to share the outcomes of our engagement into their social networks,” he says.

This year, he hopes to enhance his personal brand, simply by helping other professionals enhance their own personal brand by leading and driving community-led learning.

“Community-led learning begins to happen when an individual or a group drive the learning experience. With this as our ultimate aim, we take the first step for practitioners and leaders to initiate and lead in learning by the community, with the community. In the process, do you agree that professionals can build their brand value?”

3. See someone in need? Be a good listener

In a recent interview, DDI’s global CEO, Tacy Byham cited Daniel Goleman’s research that shows in all jobs (not just leadership jobs) one-third of success is from your IQ, while the remaining two-thirds from your EQ. However, when it comes to leadership success, only 15% is from IQ and 85% is from EQ.

Damian Sim, business development director at Singapore-based location-based tech startup LDR Technology, ardently subscribes to this school of thought. For him, a personal brand is complete without being a good listener, and working towards mutually beneficial professional relationships. “Being interested in others first is the fastest way to make new friends,” he says.

“Empathy is also essential in story-telling, which reflects the struggles and triumphs and basic emotions such as loyalty, family, love, courage, intelligence, etc. – the ups and downs of the human condition. These elements allow your messages to be more personable.”

Now there’s a positive thought as we begin the new year.

Please share your personal branding tips with us in the comments below.

When not spending her time eating or watching dog videos, Aditi loves to read, write, and tweet about HR. She is managing print, digital and social content for Human Resources, across Singapore and Malaysia.